


Impulsive Moments

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, F/M, Office AU, Office Romance, desk jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 08:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Belle and Gold decide to announce their relationship to their colleagues in a rather dramatic fashion. Anything to liven up a boring afternoon in the office…For the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: “They work opposite each other”





	Impulsive Moments

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is set in my own workplace. No, it is not based on factual events.

 

Belle heard the sigh from the other side of the computer monitors and peered under her screens to see what was going on at the desk opposite her. Gold was leaning back in his chair, bridge of his nose pinched and a pained expression on his face. Presently he caught her staring and rolled his eyes, leaning forward with what was obviously more effort than he was willing to expend at that moment in time. He hit the bright yellow button on his phone that muted his headset and spoke to her.

“Muppet of the year on line one,” he muttered, before unmuting the phone and talking to the person on the other end through gritted teeth.

“Look can you just go and check that the box is plugged in please? Yes, I’m being serious. If we’re going to get to the bottom of this then we have to start at the beginning and that means checking that the box is wired and racked properly.”

Belle stifled a giggle, she really shouldn’t be laughing at Gold’s misfortune but somehow he always managed to get the customers who weren’t exactly experts in their field. Providing business to business IT support meant that the clients they dealt with ought to have some working knowledge of their own systems, especially if the cases were advanced enough to end up on Gold or Belle’s desk. Gold was the company’s ultimate guru of data security management; if he didn’t know something about a firewall setup then it wasn’t worth knowing. Belle had not had anywhere near as much experience in the field, but she was a quick learner, and had progressed rapidly through the ranks from being the girl who answered the phones and organised the inbox to being the escalation engineer with a complete map of every customer’s network topology imprinted on her brain.

Gold scrubbed his hands over his face, muffling a groan, and Belle opened up the internal instant messenger.

_BF: So, was the box plugged in then?_

_AG: What do you think?_

_BF: I’ll take that as a no._

_AG: I think I’d get more results talking to a brick wall. At least that can’t answer back._

_BF: Oh, you’ll survive. I’ll buy you a beer after work._

_AG: Make it a whisky. I need to blot out the memory of the world’s most asinine conversation._

“Yes,” she heard Gold say. “Just press the power button, that should switch it on.” She could hear his teeth grinding behind the words, and she grabbed her stress ball, tossing it over the computer screens to him. He caught it and smiled, leaning around the monitor to blow her a kiss.

Their relationship had begun a little while ago, back before they sat opposite each other in the coveted corner of the office reserved for the most senior engineers. Belle had been on the first line support desk then, and Gold had been the cranky man in the corner none of them dared to go near and dreaded having to put phone calls through to. Belle had, by chance, seen a completely different side to him early one morning, when she had arrived before time in order to get some filing finished and had found Gold still there from the night before, still in his corner, still working to fix a major outage at a sensitive customer site. Lives were at stake if their systems didn’t get up and running again, and Gold was a man on a mission. It was only once the problem was fixed and Gold was on his twentieth cup of coffee that she’d managed to go over and express her admiration for his dedication, whereupon the grumpy, acerbic man who never had a good word for anyone had given a melancholy smile, and Belle had known that there was something a lot deeper beneath his mask of ill temper and indifference.

As a few more weeks of late nights and early starts eventually revealed to her, that something was a devoted father who had lost custody of his son due to his dedication to his work. Work was all he had left, so why not pour all his time into it? The more time he spent at work, the less time he spent in his empty, lonely house.

Her instant messenger pinged again.

_AG: What would I do without you, my darling?_

His house was not so empty now. Not now that he had Belle there, and not now Bae was there on the weekends as well.

She smiled and replied.

_BF: Probably stress yourself into a heart attack._

_AG: Very true._

He finally finished the phone call and leaned back in his chair again, pressing his hands over his face with a moan of frustration, and Belle looked up from the week’s worth of logs that she was parsing to peer around the monitor and watch him. He could always tell when she was watching him, and sure enough, he glanced over at her and smiled.

“I need a cup of tea before I start dealing with the next major catastrophe,” he said. “Want one?”

Belle nodded and went back to her logs, but not before taking another look around the office. No-one else really paid attention to their little corner, and she wondered if today would be the day that someone commented on the fact that she and Gold brought each other cups of tea. They weren’t demonstrative in their relationship, but they made no attempt to hide it either, and Belle couldn’t believe that the majority of their colleagues didn’t seem to have clocked on to the fact that they were actually together. Gold’s reputation as the office grump had evidently preceded him for so long that everyone had been conditioned not to think of him as part of a pair.

A little smile crept over Belle’s face. Perhaps it was time to remedy that, and show the office just how wrong they’d got it. And Gold needed cheering up after that headache-inducing call, after all.

She thanked him politely for the tea when he brought it back to her desk, and waited until he was sitting down and typing up his notes from the phone call before pinging him another message.

_BF: I think I might know what will make you feel better._

The response took a while, but it was just the kind that Belle was looking for.

_AG: I really don’t think that’s advisable in the office. We might scar everyone for life. No-one would be able to look at the server room in the same way again and knowing our luck, we’d crash the systems and take ourselves offline._

_BF: Yes, sad but true. In the meantime, though, I think that the office has been getting a little boring and stagnant lately. Something really needs to be done to liven it up or we’re all going to drop off._

_AG: I hope you’re not wishing for Astrid to nearly choke to death on her headphones where she’s forgotten to take them off from round her neck before standing up again._

_BF: I can’t deny that was a very entertaining episode for everyone except Astrid, but I’m not willing bodily harm on anyone. Maybe a few bruised chins from jaws hitting the floor, though._

She peered under the monitor again to try and judge Gold’s reaction. He was smiling, the corner of his mouth quirking in that little smirk that she had grown to know and love, the expression that meant either he was planning something, or that he was totally on board for whatever she was planning.

_AG: I can live with bruised chins. Now, I think I might have an idea for getting everyone’s attention._

Despite only having sat down a minute or so before, Gold stood up and sauntered around the desk to lean on Belle’s. The layout of the office meant that he was usually hidden from view and he had always taken great pains to remain so. The sight of him casually standing by Belle’s desk and showing no signs of wanting to pretend that he wasn’t there and avoid senior management was enough to get people’s heads turning in and of itself, and before long, the rest of their colleagues were glancing over in their direction, and the first couple of mutterings were making their way around the room in a little Mexican wave of disbelief.

Gold raised an eyebrow, almost imperceptible, and Belle nodded.

She’d been expecting him to kiss her. She had not been expecting him to kiss her with quite as much passion and fervour as he did. Forget the server room, they were about to be giving people heart attacks right there in the main office if they weren’t careful, but Belle really couldn’t bring herself to be too concerned, closing her eyes and surrendering into the kiss, carding her fingers into Gold’s hair and welcoming his tongue between her lips. Screw work, a little voice in the back of her head said. Why couldn’t they just do this all day?

At length, though, their day jobs called them back, and Gold let go of her with obvious reluctance, glancing around the room at the gobsmacked expressions of everyone else, including the operations director who had come out of his office and was completely unaware that he was pouring coffee down his tie instead of drinking it.

Gold shrugged as he slipped back to his own hidden nook.

“As you were,” he said nonchalantly, winking at Belle over the top of their monitors before he sat down again.

Belle smiled to herself. Yes, there were definitely some perks to working opposite her boyfriend.


End file.
